RASH OF WRONG-WAY ACCIDENTS RAISES THE QUESTION: SHOULD DOT DO MORE?

On some level we have to be responsible for our own actions. Government and technology can’t protect us from ourselves. But a spate of recent wrong-way collisions (including a friend of mine who was hit while riding his motorcycle) raises the question of whether the DOT should be doing more to prevent drivers from getting on restricted access roads going the wrong direction.

A Puyallup man died Sunday morning and two others were injured in a crash near Snoqualmie Pass on Interstate 90 that closed the westbound lane of the freeway for five hours.

The 23-year-old Puyallup man was driving the wrong way, heading east in the westbound lanes, just before 4 a.m. near Milepost 53, when the wreck happened, the State Patrol said.

His 2012 Ford Fiesta hit a westbound 1993 GMC Suburban, with a 50-year-old man driving and a 69-year-old female passenger, both from Seattle, troopers said.

The Puyallup man died at the scene, and the pair from Seattle were taken to Harborview Medical Center with injuries.

The 50-year-old was in critical but stable condition in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit on Sunday afternoon, and the 69-year-old was either in the process of being released or had already left, the Harborview nursing supervisor said.

The injured passengers and driver in the vehicle going the right way have a claim against the estate of the wrong-way driver and under his liability policy. They may also have claims under their underinsured motorist policies.